Ilse's Kitchen - culinary adventures of a girl who loves to eat

It sounds strange, but Mexico has great sushi. Some of the best I’ve ever had, I think. Lots of fresh fish and best of all, they use cream cheese as an ingredient. Pretty fantastic. Salmon and cream cheese make a great pairing. Also, it turns out, when you exclude the ingredients that makes them ‘sushi’ - the rice and the nori (seaweed). Like this version, that fits right into the low-carb, high fat Keto diet. Ingredients (makes one good-size roll): 150g smoked salmon 120g cream cheese 1/2 avocado, sliced 1/4 red onion, halved and sliced 1-2 teaspoons white sesame seeds 1-2 teaspoons black sesame seeds few sprigs of fresh chives * This works really well with a combination of cucumber and carrot too. Or mango. Just make sure they’re cut into long thin strips and line them up along the centre with the avocado. Need: A sheet of plastic foil and a sushi rolling mat Instructions: 1. Spread a piece of plastic foil over a sushi rolling mat. Take the salmon and spread it, ...

Sunday is brunch day - and this Sunday I’m having eggs. I’ve been eating an insane amount these last days, so I opted for a low carb, bread-free version today. Ingredients (serves 1): 1 avocado 2 eggs few slivers of smoked salmon  fresh dill and chives salt and freshly ground black pepper dash of olive oil  Instructions: 1. In a bowl, beat the eggs with some salt and pepper.  2. Heat a bit of olive oil in a pan and add the eggs. When the outsides are starting to set, stir. Repeat this a few more times until the egg is nearly all cooked, then turn off heat.  3. Cut the avocado in half and remove the seed. Pour some scrambled egg on top of each half and the remaining egg on the plate beside them. Top with salmon and fresh chives and dill. 

I was too tired to cook today, so I wanted something easy. Jacket potatoes are great and very little work. Because you can eat them skin and all, you don’t even need to peel them - making for very little cooking. The oven does most of the work, all you really do here is chop, stir and plate. A perfect lazy-day meal. Ingredients (serves 2): 6 medium-sized waxy potatoes (mine were between 80-100 grams a piece). 120g cottage cheese 50g smoked salmon 2 teaspoons lemon juice 2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill (plus a few pieces as garnish) 1 tablespoon chopped fresh chives 1/2 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley olive oil salt and freshly ground black pepper Instructions: Preheat the oven to 220 degrees Celsius. 1. Scrub the potatoes and pat try. Line a baking tray with parchment paper. Rub the potatoes with olive oil and salt and pepper, then place on the baking tray. 2. Bake for 10 minutes, then remove and wrap them in aluminium foil. Return to the oven and bake for ano...

After a few weeks of spring/summer-come-early, the weather has turned this week and gone back to the Dutch standard this time of year: cold and grey. A typical soup sort of day - when what’s nicest to do is curl up under a blanket and warm yourself with a bowl of soup, spooning in the oozy goodness. This is that kind of soup. The bonus? To make it literally takes less than half an hour from start to finish. Ingredients (serves 2): 150g potatoes, finely diced (about 0.7cm cubes)  1/2 stalk of celery, finely chopped 1 stalk of leek, chopped (set aside a few rings of leek for the topping) 1 small onion, chopped 1 clove garlic, minced 500mL vegetable stock 50mL whole milk 50mL cream 1 tbsp butter 1 bay leaf salt and freshly ground pepper To top: 50g salmon, chopped 1 tsp fresh chives, chopped a few rings of leek and a dab of butter (reserved from the leek above) a bit more cream Instructions: 1. In a soup pan, melt the butter and add the p...

You know those things you think you just can’t do? For years I’ve been convinced I couldn’t poach an egg. I had tried and tried and tried again, and failed more times than I can remember. A darned shame too, because of all the ways eggs can be made poached is by far my favourite.  But today is King’s Day in the Netherlands - and with all outside festivities cancelled it was up to me to make of the day what I could. So I put on a pretty dress and decided to get over myself and make myself the rich and festive brunch I’d been craving: eggs benedict with smoked salmon and chives. Poached eggs and all. And this time they came out perfect. The lesson here: never convince yourself that you can’t do something.  Ingredients (serves 2): 80g smoked salmon 2 eggs (as fresh as possible - fresh eggs hold together better when poached) 2 slices of white bread 1 tbsp lemon juice 1 tbsp white wine vinegar sprinkle of fresh chives salt and freshly ground pepper to taste holl...

Baked potatoes are always good. And then there’s hasselback baked potatoes - a ridged version that you can dress up by sticking all sorts of interesting things between the slices. Like bacon. And cheese. And garlic. You get my drift: yummmmm. They make a pretty handsome dish too.  Ingredients (serves 2): 2 large sweet potatoes 6 strips bacon 50g grated cheese (I used Gouda) 150 g sour cream 1 tsp chives to top Garlic herb butter: 1 tbsp olive oil 3 tbsp unsalted butter 2 cloves garlic, minced 1/2 tbsp fresh garlic 1/2 tbsp fresh parsley Pinch of nutmeg, paprika, salt and pepper Preheat the oven to 220 degrees Celsius. Instructions: 1. Clean and pat dry the sweet potatoes. Slice the sweet potatoes into about 3mm slices, as uniformly as possible, without slicing all the way through to the bottom (leave the bottom 1/4 of the potatoes unsliced so that the slices don’t separate from the potato altogether). 2. Stir together the herb butter ingredients. 3. Li...

Tuna tartare, the story holds, was invented in Los Angeles in 1983. Chef Shigefume Tachibe is believed to be the first who came up with the recipe, putting it on the menu at Chaya Brasserie that year as a Japanese-French fusion dish. Chef Shigefume did a good thing that day. In a nutshell, tuna tartare (like its meaty cousin) is basically raw tuna steak, chopped up with a few spices tossed in. It's a wonderfully simplistic dish, and making or breaking it all boils down to the ingredients you use. If you've got good products there's very little that can go wrong here. I found this a lovely way to serve tuna as a starter without heading straight in the sushi direction (and much easier to combine with other courses). Ingredients (serves 4): (time: 15 minutes) Tuna Tartare 350g sushi-grade tuna 1 tsp dijon mustard* 6 capers, very finely chopped 1 tsp chives, finely chopped 1 shallot, finely chopped 2 avocados, diced 3 yellow tomatoes** zest of 1/2 lemon 1 ...